Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
My Late Night Meal With Kelvin
New York may be the city that never sleeps, but I don’t recommend arriving there hungry after 1:00 a.m. On a recent trip to my former hometown, I made that mistake and found myself foraging for food in all the wrong places.
I realize there are dining establishments that stay open all night, but I had the added bonus of arriving in town just in time to greet the next ice age, global warming be damned. Setting off on my sustenance-seeking adventure, I quickly realize that the distance I was willing to travel by foot from the front entrance to the hotel was directly proportional to the integer following the minus sign in the wind chill factor.
Just under the wire a mere ten feet from the hotel’s doors, I found a typical New York convenience store, and by typical I mean one whose dining options were limited to Top Ramen, some weird vacuum packed Lebanese meat product, canned Chef Boyaredee macaroni and cheese and an assortment of breath mints.
Thinking of my health, I opted for the $3.49 can of mac and cheese. On the walk back to my room (which I expected would be enough exercise to work off the humiliating, sodium-laden can of shame I was about to eat), I mentally prepared for what was to be the most disappointing and depressing mac and cheese experience of my life. Unfortunately I had no idea just how disappointing... the room, while nice, was not furnished with a can opener, a bowl or a working microwave oven. Chef Boyardee’s smiling face on the label began to mock me as I suited up to continue the most dismal gastronomic adventure in New York City history.
Dispensing with the walking distance equation to which I initially held myself, I saw that salvation for my hunger lay just two blocks away in the form of a meximelt, a soft taco and a crunchwrap supreme. Taco Bell was a marginally better option (measured in units NASA had to invent because atomic units weren’t small enough) than the unopened can of despair still sitting in the room. Since temperature could now only be properly measured in degrees Kelvin, I literally ran for the border.
As I waited to order, the combination of hunger, cold, exhaustion and self-loathing somehow worked in concert to open my eyes to the secret of Taco Bell’s success. This is an empire built around a menu where virtually every item is identical, with the exception of the order in which the ingredients are arranged. My personal thanks go out to whoever saw fit to invent a whole new ‘fourth’ meal, one that I’d be enjoying in the hotel in a few short, freezing minutes. I’m not ignorant to the damage that can be done by eating this kind of food (for that matter, neither is anyone within a 50-foot radius of me in the hours immediately following a bean burrito experience), but I do have an affinity for any food involving cheese, beef, sour cream, and sometimes bacon.
Unable to run back to the hotel due to the cryogenic freezing of my body’s tissues as I made my way through the ice-covered tundra of New York, I thought about the amount of things that happen outside in the city with reckless disregard for the weather. In fact, worse than the hosts of Today Show, who are protected from the elements by Al Roker and his mighty Doppler weather radar weight loss machine, are the legions of crazy tourists who populate the Today Show plaza on a daily basis.
These people, who clearly are nuts, stand outside for hours, often in oppressive weather, just for the promise of getting a second of airtime during which they instantaneously transform from a miserable, tired tourist into a raving lunatic frantically waving at scores of viewers who will make fun of them for being there in the first place. Invariably someone goes home bummed when Al delivers the weather from directly in front of them, causing that person’s lifelong dream of waving at a camera to go up in smoke.
Upon my arrival back at the hotel, I broke into my faux-Mexican feast, only to find out that I was short-changed by one meximelt. My Jewish side complained that not going back to resolve this catastrophic infraction would be a sin; my logical side, which threatened to beat the Jewish side to a pulp, won – despite the fact that a meximelt, in all its gooey, melted delight would have been worth the trouble.
The quest was over. I may not be MacGyver, but I found a way to feed myself. Which reminds me… If you know of a food drive, I have a non-perishable canned food item that I need to donate. As long as you don’t mind that it’s frozen solid.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
…And the Home of the Braves
After more than three months living in Atlanta, we finally ventured out to do things the locals do. Our first activity was attending the Atlanta Braves vs. New York Mets baseball game at Turner Field, which is named for modest, wealthy businessman and local Lunatic Laureate Ted Turner. The fact that they were playing a New York team, albeit not the good New York team, was at least comforting.
As is the case with most new stadiums, Turner Field features all sorts of activities and diversions designed to make you forget how much you paid for the seats that are undoubtedly too far from the field to see any of the actual action, not to mention the parking fee that allows you to park in a lot that requires you to walk only slightly further than if you had left your car in your own driveway.
We managed to ignore most of the pre-game activities and elected to go straight to the field-level front row for an opportunity to get up close to and possibly meet members of New York’s second-best baseball team. Armed with official Rawlings Major League Baseballs purchased just an hour prior, my two kids and I pushed our way to the front. Just then, a buzz began to our left: autographs were being signed. Not officially knowing anyone on the Mets’ roster, we jockeyed for position to get our baseballs signed by some random Hispanic guy in a Mets uniform. From what I gather, his name is “O~~ﮟ~D.” I don’t think he played that day, but then my seats were far enough from the field that I was able to actually see Shea Stadium, so I’m not the best person to ask.
After getting O~~ﮟ~D’s signature, we were asked to find our seats, which required an uphill hike, a camel and a sherpa. The ambient southern-laced calls of “cold beer!,” “wieners!” (which I think is funny to yell in a baseball stadium), and “cotton candy!” were beginning. Which of course reminded my kids that they were rapaciously hungry.
Any person who ever sees us at a baseball game would think we never feed our children. When they are at home they barely eat enough to survive, but at a baseball stadium they have tapeworms. Not wanting others to think I’m starving my kids, I invariably wind up spending the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Belgium on snacks, drinks and other sundry items. What’s worse is that Turner Field is the one stadium in the free world that actually allows you to bring in food, drinks and snacks. Judging by my cash-flow that day, I single-handedly covered their losses for everyone in my section who brown-bagged it.
Before this game, my only experience with Braves fans was when I watched the Yankees sweep the 1999 World Series in person at Yankee Stadium. But it was the televised games on TV where I became familiar with the Tomahawk Chop, a ‘chopping’ arm-wave, accompanied by a droning chant, made by Braves fans to support the team when they rally. I always hated the Tomahawk Chop, but now that I’ve witnessed it in person performed by some 45,000 Braves fans, I can appreciate how truly irritating it is.
Silly as these traditions may be, I realized every team’s fans have them. In The Bronx, we tend to yell out crazy things like “Let’s Go Yankees” followed by a foot-stomping bum, bum, bum-bum-bum. Where do they come up with these things?
As the Mets took the lead, and we as a family rooted them on (lesser of two evils), some Tomahawk Chump got into a verbal spat with my wife:
HER: Yay!
HIM: Yeah.
HER: YEAH!
HIM: We’ll see.
HER: Yeah. We will see.
HIM: Huh…
HER: Yay!
In the midst of all this, I had my first experience on the big screen. I’ve attended countless games at various New York stadiums, but it’s at my very first game in Atlanta that I finally make the Diamond Vision screen cut. Yet everybody in my family managed to miss it because of the heated exchange happening at precisely that moment. So now I had a decision to make: do I tell my family that I miraculously appeared on the screen at exactly the moment when nobody was paying attention? Or do I simply bite my lip and avoid the perjury card that will surely be thrown my way? I had no choice but to avoid my family altogether and instead tell the stranger sitting to my left.
Plenty of other people made the screen that day. Mostly people wearing the team’s colors or holding homemade signs supporting the team. Lucky for us, there were several times the cameras caught a large group of fans who had created single letters to spell out an entire thought. This never works. Especially when they are baseball fans that are dumb enough to have gotten drunk on stadium-purchased alcohol. At different times, while being broadcast on the Diamond Vision screen, their signs said “O-G- -B-R-A-V-E-S” and “G-O- -B-R-A-V-S-E.”
Every Sunday, the Braves allow kids between the ages of 4-14 run the bases after the game for free (cost of photos every parent will purchase from the Braves website: $12.99 and up). So with the score 3-1 Mets, we left in the bottom of the 9th inning so we could stand on a line with what amounted to the combined population of all the US Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico (including The Bronx and the entire Major League Baseball roster).
Judging by the amount of Tomahawk Chanting we heard, either Hank Aaron himself had come out of retirement to reclaim the Home Run title or Osama bin Laden had been captured on the field. I left the line to see what was happening. The Braves managed to rally one run in, making the final score 3-2.
When I got back to the line (with a mile-post marker that said the wait would be 70 minutes), my family was nowhere to be found. I can only hope that the person who posted those signs was fired.
I caught up with the family, walked onto the field and my imagination ran wild. I never really dreamed I’d be a baseball player, so other thoughts of childhood rushed back into my mind… getting in trouble for hitting my sister; being grounded for turning the TV knob too fast; being hit in the face with a line drive that nearly required reconstructive surgery. It was still cool to be on a real Major League Baseball field – and my son, who firmly believes he’ll play on a team with Derek Jeter one day, was in all his glory.
We left lighter in the wallet and a little daunted by the whole Tomahawk Chop thing. Regardless, it was a fun day out and we’re lucky to have moved to a town where they have a baseball team. But we learned a lot. Next time we’ll bring our own snacks, our own sherpa and a sign that says “B-A-R-V-E-S- -T-S-I-N-K.”
As is the case with most new stadiums, Turner Field features all sorts of activities and diversions designed to make you forget how much you paid for the seats that are undoubtedly too far from the field to see any of the actual action, not to mention the parking fee that allows you to park in a lot that requires you to walk only slightly further than if you had left your car in your own driveway.
We managed to ignore most of the pre-game activities and elected to go straight to the field-level front row for an opportunity to get up close to and possibly meet members of New York’s second-best baseball team. Armed with official Rawlings Major League Baseballs purchased just an hour prior, my two kids and I pushed our way to the front. Just then, a buzz began to our left: autographs were being signed. Not officially knowing anyone on the Mets’ roster, we jockeyed for position to get our baseballs signed by some random Hispanic guy in a Mets uniform. From what I gather, his name is “O~~ﮟ~D.” I don’t think he played that day, but then my seats were far enough from the field that I was able to actually see Shea Stadium, so I’m not the best person to ask.
After getting O~~ﮟ~D’s signature, we were asked to find our seats, which required an uphill hike, a camel and a sherpa. The ambient southern-laced calls of “cold beer!,” “wieners!” (which I think is funny to yell in a baseball stadium), and “cotton candy!” were beginning. Which of course reminded my kids that they were rapaciously hungry.
Any person who ever sees us at a baseball game would think we never feed our children. When they are at home they barely eat enough to survive, but at a baseball stadium they have tapeworms. Not wanting others to think I’m starving my kids, I invariably wind up spending the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Belgium on snacks, drinks and other sundry items. What’s worse is that Turner Field is the one stadium in the free world that actually allows you to bring in food, drinks and snacks. Judging by my cash-flow that day, I single-handedly covered their losses for everyone in my section who brown-bagged it.
Before this game, my only experience with Braves fans was when I watched the Yankees sweep the 1999 World Series in person at Yankee Stadium. But it was the televised games on TV where I became familiar with the Tomahawk Chop, a ‘chopping’ arm-wave, accompanied by a droning chant, made by Braves fans to support the team when they rally. I always hated the Tomahawk Chop, but now that I’ve witnessed it in person performed by some 45,000 Braves fans, I can appreciate how truly irritating it is.
Silly as these traditions may be, I realized every team’s fans have them. In The Bronx, we tend to yell out crazy things like “Let’s Go Yankees” followed by a foot-stomping bum, bum, bum-bum-bum. Where do they come up with these things?
As the Mets took the lead, and we as a family rooted them on (lesser of two evils), some Tomahawk Chump got into a verbal spat with my wife:
HER: Yay!
HIM: Yeah.
HER: YEAH!
HIM: We’ll see.
HER: Yeah. We will see.
HIM: Huh…
HER: Yay!
In the midst of all this, I had my first experience on the big screen. I’ve attended countless games at various New York stadiums, but it’s at my very first game in Atlanta that I finally make the Diamond Vision screen cut. Yet everybody in my family managed to miss it because of the heated exchange happening at precisely that moment. So now I had a decision to make: do I tell my family that I miraculously appeared on the screen at exactly the moment when nobody was paying attention? Or do I simply bite my lip and avoid the perjury card that will surely be thrown my way? I had no choice but to avoid my family altogether and instead tell the stranger sitting to my left.
Plenty of other people made the screen that day. Mostly people wearing the team’s colors or holding homemade signs supporting the team. Lucky for us, there were several times the cameras caught a large group of fans who had created single letters to spell out an entire thought. This never works. Especially when they are baseball fans that are dumb enough to have gotten drunk on stadium-purchased alcohol. At different times, while being broadcast on the Diamond Vision screen, their signs said “O-G- -B-R-A-V-E-S” and “G-O- -B-R-A-V-S-E.”
Every Sunday, the Braves allow kids between the ages of 4-14 run the bases after the game for free (cost of photos every parent will purchase from the Braves website: $12.99 and up). So with the score 3-1 Mets, we left in the bottom of the 9th inning so we could stand on a line with what amounted to the combined population of all the US Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico (including The Bronx and the entire Major League Baseball roster).
Judging by the amount of Tomahawk Chanting we heard, either Hank Aaron himself had come out of retirement to reclaim the Home Run title or Osama bin Laden had been captured on the field. I left the line to see what was happening. The Braves managed to rally one run in, making the final score 3-2.
When I got back to the line (with a mile-post marker that said the wait would be 70 minutes), my family was nowhere to be found. I can only hope that the person who posted those signs was fired.
I caught up with the family, walked onto the field and my imagination ran wild. I never really dreamed I’d be a baseball player, so other thoughts of childhood rushed back into my mind… getting in trouble for hitting my sister; being grounded for turning the TV knob too fast; being hit in the face with a line drive that nearly required reconstructive surgery. It was still cool to be on a real Major League Baseball field – and my son, who firmly believes he’ll play on a team with Derek Jeter one day, was in all his glory.
We left lighter in the wallet and a little daunted by the whole Tomahawk Chop thing. Regardless, it was a fun day out and we’re lucky to have moved to a town where they have a baseball team. But we learned a lot. Next time we’ll bring our own snacks, our own sherpa and a sign that says “B-A-R-V-E-S- -T-S-I-N-K.”
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
The Pistachio Ice Cream Industry Should Say “mmm goy sai”
Being a New Yorker, I know that every culture’s dining experience is unique. Every cuisine has its own set of outstanding attributes. Among the best is Chinese food. Take-out or dine-in, no matter which Chinese restaurant option you choose, you know you’re in for a delectable delight - as long as you don’t mind skipping dessert.
As far back as I can remember, a Chinese food dining experience was an event to behold. After sitting down in the restaurant’s dining room, I always enjoyed taking in the view. The usual decorations always were ever-present: the dragons, the red paper lights (with what was purported to be actual Chinese writing on them) and the panoramic Chinese vistas living on too-old posters hanging behind shoddy picture frames. One has to wonder if the Chinese culture really is so greasy, old and insipid – or is that just how it’s represented here in America? Having visited Mainland China myself, I can say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it is the single kitschiest country on the planet.
From the beginning to three-quarters of the way through, a Chinese dining experience is terrific. Fried appetizers are the standard: egg rolls (the contents of which nobody should ever really ask about), shrimp toast and the pu pu platter – which, once you get past the ridiculous name and the fact that you could potentially use it as a weapon – is the coolest appetizer on Earth.
Speaking of fried foods, it should be noted that dragons were the first creatures to fully succumb to the effects of LDL, which electronically savvy readers will recognize as the technology which allows you to watch Iron Chef in high definition.
Eating the main course of a Chinese meal is an event in and of itself. The entrees are artful and colorful, and always floating in some kind of a salty, randomly-colored sauce. Beef with broccoli and pork lo mein are always delicious (the latter being, inexplicably, the root of a longstanding cold war between the Chinese and the Italians about who invented spaghetti and what it should be called. It’s tough to conjure up an image of what ‘lo mein and meatballs’ would look like).
When it comes time to undo the top button on your pants, however, everything in the Chinese Restaurant Play Book and Operating Manual really falls apart. The single Chinese contribution to the dessert forum is a sugary piece of cardboard wrapped around a piece of paper.
Think of the other cultural offerings for capping off your meal: Italians have cannolis; the French gave us crème brulee; America has apple pie. Even the Greeks stepped up with baklava. The Chinese? The fortune cookie, which is easily the worst invention in the history of edible food.
How can a culture so well rounded in its other gastronomic offerings concurrently be so abysmal at dessert? The most surprising part about the fortune cookie is that nobody who has ever gotten one has actually looked forward to the cookie part. The fortune inside is always the attraction. Isn’t it strange that a culture like ours, which goes out of its way to “save room for dessert” is more interested in reading a piece of paper with words of faux wisdom or vague prophecy than it is in actually eating the miserable confection? For added amusement, it helps to add the words “in bed” to the end of whatever fortune you get. So you wind up with “To move a mountain, one must begin with a single pebble – in bed,” which makes no sense at all, unless you’re about five or six zombies deep. Then it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard.
The words of wisdom in the cookie are often attributed to Confucius, the esteemed Chinese thinker and social philosopher who was the first to recognize the need to do something to make the fortune cookie palatable. Coincidentally, upset by the unpleasant dessert placed in front of him, Confucius was also the first to ask, “Do you have Jello?”
Thus began the tradition of Chinese restaurants offering decidedly bland desserts in place of anything truly inspirational. If you are looking for dessert at any given Chinese restaurant today, your choices will be fortune cookies, Jello, oranges or one of three flavors of ice cream: chocolate, vanilla or PISTACHIO??
By offering these unexciting desserts, the Chinese are all but admitting to their complete failure as a people to develop an edible dessert they can call their own. They have dropped the ball and are now calling it to our attention.
In terms of the ice cream, chocolate and vanilla make total sense. But who ever eats pistachio ice cream outside of a Chinese restaurant? I’ve never seen pistachio ice cream in a supermarket freezer aisle, let alone being able to order it at a good ice cream counter. Yet, at the Chinese restaurant, you’d think it was among the more popular flavor choices. The pistachio industry is evidently guilty of selling the Chinese a bill of goods.
Perhaps the most troubling thing about the ice cream at the Chinese restaurant is the presentation. A silver dish with a single scoop of your flavor of choice - but no syrup, whipped cream, cherries or nuts. You just get the lone, boring scoop of ice cream. And what do they do with it? They stick a fortune cookie on top.
In spite of it all, I will still crave my visits to Chinese restaurants. I’m conditioned to know that, while the bulk of the meal will be second-to-none, the dessert will leave much to be desired. Which is a good thing, because when I’m hungry again in an hour, I can go to the Italian restaurant three doors down. It’s at this point that I will think back to the words of wisdom from the last fortune cookie I received:
“If you want a really good dessert, I recommend Giuseppe’s down the road. Try a fresh cannoli.”
As far back as I can remember, a Chinese food dining experience was an event to behold. After sitting down in the restaurant’s dining room, I always enjoyed taking in the view. The usual decorations always were ever-present: the dragons, the red paper lights (with what was purported to be actual Chinese writing on them) and the panoramic Chinese vistas living on too-old posters hanging behind shoddy picture frames. One has to wonder if the Chinese culture really is so greasy, old and insipid – or is that just how it’s represented here in America? Having visited Mainland China myself, I can say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it is the single kitschiest country on the planet.
From the beginning to three-quarters of the way through, a Chinese dining experience is terrific. Fried appetizers are the standard: egg rolls (the contents of which nobody should ever really ask about), shrimp toast and the pu pu platter – which, once you get past the ridiculous name and the fact that you could potentially use it as a weapon – is the coolest appetizer on Earth.
Speaking of fried foods, it should be noted that dragons were the first creatures to fully succumb to the effects of LDL, which electronically savvy readers will recognize as the technology which allows you to watch Iron Chef in high definition.
Eating the main course of a Chinese meal is an event in and of itself. The entrees are artful and colorful, and always floating in some kind of a salty, randomly-colored sauce. Beef with broccoli and pork lo mein are always delicious (the latter being, inexplicably, the root of a longstanding cold war between the Chinese and the Italians about who invented spaghetti and what it should be called. It’s tough to conjure up an image of what ‘lo mein and meatballs’ would look like).
When it comes time to undo the top button on your pants, however, everything in the Chinese Restaurant Play Book and Operating Manual really falls apart. The single Chinese contribution to the dessert forum is a sugary piece of cardboard wrapped around a piece of paper.
Think of the other cultural offerings for capping off your meal: Italians have cannolis; the French gave us crème brulee; America has apple pie. Even the Greeks stepped up with baklava. The Chinese? The fortune cookie, which is easily the worst invention in the history of edible food.
How can a culture so well rounded in its other gastronomic offerings concurrently be so abysmal at dessert? The most surprising part about the fortune cookie is that nobody who has ever gotten one has actually looked forward to the cookie part. The fortune inside is always the attraction. Isn’t it strange that a culture like ours, which goes out of its way to “save room for dessert” is more interested in reading a piece of paper with words of faux wisdom or vague prophecy than it is in actually eating the miserable confection? For added amusement, it helps to add the words “in bed” to the end of whatever fortune you get. So you wind up with “To move a mountain, one must begin with a single pebble – in bed,” which makes no sense at all, unless you’re about five or six zombies deep. Then it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard.
The words of wisdom in the cookie are often attributed to Confucius, the esteemed Chinese thinker and social philosopher who was the first to recognize the need to do something to make the fortune cookie palatable. Coincidentally, upset by the unpleasant dessert placed in front of him, Confucius was also the first to ask, “Do you have Jello?”
Thus began the tradition of Chinese restaurants offering decidedly bland desserts in place of anything truly inspirational. If you are looking for dessert at any given Chinese restaurant today, your choices will be fortune cookies, Jello, oranges or one of three flavors of ice cream: chocolate, vanilla or PISTACHIO??
By offering these unexciting desserts, the Chinese are all but admitting to their complete failure as a people to develop an edible dessert they can call their own. They have dropped the ball and are now calling it to our attention.
In terms of the ice cream, chocolate and vanilla make total sense. But who ever eats pistachio ice cream outside of a Chinese restaurant? I’ve never seen pistachio ice cream in a supermarket freezer aisle, let alone being able to order it at a good ice cream counter. Yet, at the Chinese restaurant, you’d think it was among the more popular flavor choices. The pistachio industry is evidently guilty of selling the Chinese a bill of goods.
Perhaps the most troubling thing about the ice cream at the Chinese restaurant is the presentation. A silver dish with a single scoop of your flavor of choice - but no syrup, whipped cream, cherries or nuts. You just get the lone, boring scoop of ice cream. And what do they do with it? They stick a fortune cookie on top.
In spite of it all, I will still crave my visits to Chinese restaurants. I’m conditioned to know that, while the bulk of the meal will be second-to-none, the dessert will leave much to be desired. Which is a good thing, because when I’m hungry again in an hour, I can go to the Italian restaurant three doors down. It’s at this point that I will think back to the words of wisdom from the last fortune cookie I received:
“If you want a really good dessert, I recommend Giuseppe’s down the road. Try a fresh cannoli.”
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